SB5678 – Provides for preliminary declarations by the UTC on whether proposed energy projects would comply with a utility’s requirements for reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Energy Transformation Act.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Short (R; 7th District; Northeast Washington.) (Co-Sponsor Senator Carlyle- D)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy February 22nd; referred to Rules; passed by the Senate March 4th.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the Senate – Passed
Had a hearing in Environment, Energy & Technology January 13th; replaced by a substitute, which limits the option of seeking a declaratory order to investor owned utilities and clarifies a couple of procedural things. Passed out of committee January 27th. Referred to Ways and Means; had a hearing February 4th and passed out of committee the 7th. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate February 12th.

Summary –
Original bill –
The bill would allow a private utility or the person proposing an energy transformation project, nonemitting electric generation project, or renewable resource project that might be acquired by the utility to petition the Utilities and Transportation Commission for a declaratory order to determine whether the project would comply with the utility’s need to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in order to comply with the Clean Energy Transformation Act. Projects that the UTC determined would comply with the requirements could be identified in a utility’s Clean Energy Action Plan and its Clean Energy Implementation Plan. The Commission could reevaluate a resource or a project in considering whether to approve a Clean Energy Implementation Plan or in a rate case, if it deviated substantively from the one described in the application foe a declaratory order.

(In fact, the last section of the bill says that “nothing” in the section of it about the declaratory orders “preempts the authority of the commission from making a determination, independent of the processes under [that] section … on whether a proposed energy transformation project, nonemitting electric generation project, or renewable resource project … meets the planning and portfolio requirements of an investor-owned utility’s Clean Energy Implementation Plan.)